Equation Editor in Office/Word v.X

[guyatmbe]

Dear all,

I know the subject has been addressed to some extent recently, so
please forgive me if I'm being dense.

I have Office v.X (with the latest updates) running under Panther
(10.3.9).

I recently received a document file (almost certainly created on a PC)
with "Microsoft Equations" in it. Realizing that I could not read the
equations, let alone edit them, I tried to install Equation Editor
from the Value Pack; however, it does not seem to have installed, as I
cannot access it from within Word (double-clicking on an equation
gives me the error "Word cannot edit the Microsoft Equation").

I should perhaps confess that at some time in the not too distant
past, I did "drag the Word application icon to trash" and reinstalled
Word.

Any suggestions?

2. In the same batch of work, I got files with non-standard
characters, which will not display or print. I have come accross this
before with such ASCII characters as half, quarter, male and female
symbols, but now it is a problem. I tried installing the TrueType
fonts from the Value Pack, but it has made no difference.

Any suggestions?

many thanks.

Guy

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Guy--

Dragging Word to the trash and reinstalling it doesn't fix anything, and
may have caused problems by leaving orphaned files in various places.
However, since the fix would be Remove and Reinstall for a clean start,
you might as well try some other things first.

Equation Editor may have installed, but it can't edit cross-platform. To
test whether it installed, you would try Insert | Object and select
Equation.

*However*, I suggest you forget Equation Editor. MS buys it from the
company that makes MathType. Install the MathType demo--after 30 days it
will turn into MathType Lite, which is still better than EE in that it
allows cross-platform equations. Also, MathType will give you a math
font, which might solve problem 2, and the font stays after the demo
expires.
http://dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/

If you decide Office is acting up and you want a clean start, follow the
Remove and Reinstall procedures here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/RemoveReinstall.html

Daiya

 

[Guy]

Dear Daiya,

According to the "test" you proposed, Equation Editor was installed,
but it wasn't working in Word, so I opted for the "better" option.
MathType seems to be up and running and accessible for equation
editing in Word itself. It has resolved some maths symbols that were
inserted in the document using some for of equation editor, but not
the font-related issue itself -- please see my new post.

Many thanks!

here's hoping I don't have to go down the uninstall-reinstall
route

Guy